Heat Transfer and Bearing Characteristics of Energy Piles: Review

Jinli Xie and Yinghong Qin
Additional contact information
Jinli Xie: College of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Guangxi University, 100 University Road, Nanning 530004, China
Yinghong Qin: College of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Guangxi University, 100 University Road, Nanning 530004, China

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 20, 1-15

Abstract: Energy piles, combined ground source heat pumps (GSHP) with the traditional pile foundation, have the advantages of high heat transfer efficiency, less space occupation and low cost. This paper summarizes the latest research on the heat transfer and bearing capacity of energy piles. It is found that S-shaped tubes have the largest heat transfer area and the best heat transfer efficiency; that energy piles need to be designed conservatively, such as adjusting the safety coefficient, number and spacing of the piles according to the additional temperature loads; and that unbalanced surface temperature has not been resolved, caused by uneven refrigeration/heating demand in one cycle. A composite energy pile applied to water-rich areas is proposed to overcome the decay of bearing and heat transfer performance. Besides, most of the heat transfer models are borehole-oriented and will fit for energy piles effectively if the models support variable ground temperature boundary conditions.

Keywords: ground source heat pumps; energy piles; heat transfer; bearing capacity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/20/6483/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/20/6483/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:14:y:2021:i:20:p:6483-:d:653070

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().